a unexpected, neat lil dvd with something for everyone

FIGHTING

There’s a reason why Hollywood loves New York and its not just for its romance and glamour but also for its underbelly, its never say die spirit and its unmistakable hustler energy. And while FIGHTING is quite literally as its title suggests, about home grown Alabama boy struggling on the streets of NEW YORK till he gets into some big time money making fisticuffs and the story goes exactly where you expect it to, there is an idiosyncratic, real time mood director MUNTEIL creates and its clear he is extremely comfortable in MANHATTEN- its alleys, its high rises, its corner shops and its suburbs which makes the playground for this one that much more engaging despite the predictability.

I enjoyed the film and from someone who wouldn’t pick an action brawler on a normal basis that says a lot. For its refreshing clever humor, for its real, grounded, never melodramatic performances, for its energetically executed fights and great music that goes with em, for the gritty, palpable energy of the city, the relationship between a surprisingly good CHANNING and the always good HOWARD which for me the understated, moving centre of the piece and for ABUELA – an old Hispanic granny who steals the show in an unexpected comic scene!!

new what?

SOME MAY SAY, Twilight New Moon is a better film than the first: by better I mean

more developed and drawn out (making it also, at over 2 and half hours, PAINFULLY long),
more finished: very literally adapted,
more polished and shiny- note, new locales, bigger budgets, some cameos by the delicious Michael Sheen and a mesmerizing Dakota Fanning who doesn’t blink, has one scene, and pretty much steals the show,
more fleshed out characters- literally more skin
more drama and basically more fan friendly and saga stuffed.
But for someone like me, who hasn’t read the books and cant fathom the teenage female worlds fascination with vampires and now naturally, warewolves or RICHARD PATTINSON, white skinned and wooden as hell, it was a kind of torture.

Now for a disclaimer: I flipped through the first few pages of the second book, part of the press kit and a neat lil promotional trick from the makers, and I could actually understand the power of Meyer’s words having the potential to suck you in but, the prose, rich in imagery and fantasy but with its almost juvenile tone isn’t really my style and even my imagination does a better job conjuring up that universe than the film does.

Im not convinced. Not by the first frame of GRANDMA Bella, not by Pattinson, not even somehow by Bella. Stewart wasn’t bad in the first one, but she’s the same gazing, twitching, this time also nightmare-overpowered-and-shrieking thing she was in the first. While her performance isn’t bad, it tends to stay in the same zone and I kept wishing I could see a new edge- trying to be normal, pining for Edward, falling for JACOB (and did she really ever?), getting adrenalin rushes- the girls energy is pretty much the same.

For the first 40 mins , the pace feels laboured, the music is distracting and the acting dull. Sporadic bursts of action don’t help much because in terms of plot, very little happens till our hero has to leave. Which is probably one of the most anticlimactic exits I have seen.

A lull in the middle of the story follows till hero number 2 enters and this was probably the most interesting part of the film- some FUN teasing, adventure, romance- hallelulah for actual sparks. I spoke too soon. Before you know it, hero #2 ie JACOB turns into the angry young man and like BELLA, we have no idea what the tattoo and short cropped hair mean for quite a while. He’s a WAREWOLF!! What else?

When is the interval I found myself saying? Act 2 offers more bite, action and some suspense but by then, I just didn’t care. So much so that that final reunion and that ultimate lingering question- a clever, gasp of a hook for the sequel (heaven forbid, and heaven help) left me as cold as the Cullens skin.